James Earl Jones

James Earl Jones (born January 17, 1931) is an American actor. His career has spanned more than 60 years, and he has been described as "one of America's most distinguished and versatile" actors[5] and "one of the greatest actors in American history".[6] Since his Broadway debut in 1957, Jones has won many awards, including a Tony Award for his role in The Great White Hope, which also earned him a Golden Globe Award and an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor in a Leading Role for the film version of the play. Jones has won three Emmy Awards, including two in the same year in 1990. He is also known for his voice roles as Darth Vader in the Star Wars film series and Mufasa in Disney's The Lion King, as well as many other film, stage and television roles.

Jones has been said to possess "one of the best-known voices in show business, a stirring basso profondo that has lent gravel and gravitas" to his projects, including live-action acting, voice acting, and commercial voice-overs.[7][8] In 1970, he won a Grammy Award for Great American Documents. As a child, Jones had a stutter. In his episode of Biography, he said he overcame the affliction through poetry, public speaking, and acting, although it lasted for several years. A pre-medmajor in college, he went on to serve in the United States Army during the Korean War before pursuing a career in acting. On November 12, 2011, he received an Honorary Academy Award.[6] On November 9, 2015, Jones received the Voice Arts Icon Award.[9] On May 25, 2017, he received an Honorary Doctor of Arts degree from Harvard University and concluded the event's benediction with "May the Force be with you".[10]

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James Earl Jones was born in Arkabutla, Mississippi, on January 17, 1931,[11] to Ruth (Williams) Jones (1911–1986), a teacher and maid, and Robert Earl Jones (1910–2006), a boxer, butler, and chauffeur who left the family shortly after James Earl's birth. He later became a stage and screen actor in New York and Hollywood.[12][13] Jones and his father did not get to know each other until the 1950s but became reconciled then. His parents were African-American, and Jones has learned they also had Irish and Native American ancestry.[14][15]

From the age of five, Jones was raised by his maternal grandparents, John Henry and Maggie Williams,[11] who had moved from Mississippi in the Great Migration and had a farm in Jackson, Michigan.[16] Jones found the transition to living with his grandparents in Michigan traumatic, and developed a stutter so severe that he refused to speak. When his family moved to the more rural Brethren, Michigan, a teacher helped him overcome his stutter. He remained functionally mute for eight years until he entered high school. He credits his English teacher, Donald Crouch, who discovered he had a gift for writing poetry, with helping him end his silence.[13] Crouch urged him to challenge his reluctance to speak.[17] "I was a stutterer. I couldn't talk. So my first year of school was my first mute year, and then those mute years continued until I got to high school."[18]

After being educated at the Browning School for boys in his high school years and graduating as vice president of his class from Dickson Rural Agricultural School (now Brethren High School) in Brethren, Michigan, Jones attended the University of Michigan where he was initially a pre-medmajor.[13] He joined the Reserve Officer Training Corps and excelled. He felt comfortable within the structure of the military environment and enjoyed the camaraderie of his fellow cadets in the Pershing Rifles Drill Team and Scabbard and Blade Honor Society.[19] During the course of his studies, Jones discovered he was not cut out to be a doctor. Instead, he focused on drama at the University of Michigan School of Music, Theatre & Dance with the thought of doing something he enjoyed, before, he assumed, he would have to go off to fight in the Korean War. After four years of college, Jones graduated from the university in 1955.[20]

With the war intensifying in Korea, Jones expected to be deployed as soon as he received his commission as a second lieutenant. As he waited for his orders, he worked as a part-time stage crew hand at the Ramsdell Theatre in Manistee, Michigan, where he had earlier performed. Jones was commissioned in mid-1953, after the Korean War's end, and reported to Fort Benning to attend the Infantry Officers Basic Course. He attended Ranger School and received his Ranger Tab (although he said during an interview on the BBC's The One Show, screened on November 11, 2009, that he "washed out" of Ranger training). He was initially to report to Fort Leonard Wood, but his unit was instead sent to establish a cold weather training command at the former Camp Hale near Leadville, Colorado. His battalion became a training unit in the rugged terrain of the Rocky Mountains. Jones was promoted to first lieutenant prior to his discharge.[21]

He moved to New York, where he studied at the American Theatre Wing. He worked as a janitor to support himself.

Jones began his acting career at the Ramsdell Theatre in Manistee, Michigan. In 1953, he was a stage carpenter. During the 1955–57 seasons, he was an actor and stage manager. He performed his first portrayal of Shakespeare's Othello in this theater in 1955.[23] His early career also included an appearance in the ABC radio anthology series Theatre-Five.[24]

In 2014, Jones played the role of Grandpa in the comedy You Can't Take it With You at the Longacre Theatre, Broadway. On September 23, 2015, Jones opened in a new revival of The Gin Game opposite Cicely Tyson, in the same venue where the play originally premiered (with Hume Cronyn and Jessica Tandy): the John Golden Theater. The play had a planned limited run of 16 weeks.[30]

When Linda Blair did the girl in The Exorcist, they hired Mercedes McCambridge to do the voice of the devil coming out of her. And there was controversy as to whether Mercedes should get credit. I was one who thought no, she was just special effects. So when it came to Darth Vader, I said, no, I'm just special effects. But it became so identified that by the third one, I thought, OK I'll let them put my name on it.[32]

He also has done the CNN tagline, "This is CNN", as well as "This is CNN International", and the opening for CNN's morning show New Day. Jones was also a longtime spokesman for Bell Atlantic and later Verizon. He also lent his voice to the opening for NBC's coverage of the 2000 and 2004 Summer Olympics; "the Big PI in the Sky" (God) in the computer game Under a Killing Moon; a Claymation film, The Creation; and several other guest spots on The Simpsons. Jones also lent his voice for a narrative part in the Adam Sandler comedy Click, released in June 2006. Jones narrated all 27 books of the New Testament in the audiobook James Earl Jones Reads the Bible.[42]

In 1969, Jones participated in making test films for the children's education series Sesame Street; these shorts, combined with animated segments, were shown to groups of children to gauge the effectiveness of the then-groundbreaking Sesame Street format. As cited by production notes included in the DVD release Sesame Street: Old School 1969–1974, the short that had the greatest impact with test audiences was one showing bald-headed Jones counting slowly to ten. This and other segments featuring Jones were eventually aired as part of the Sesame Street series itself when it debuted later in 1969 and Jones is often cited as the first celebrity guest on that series, although a segment with Carol Burnett was the first to actually be broadcast.[13]

He has played lead characters on television in three series. First, he appeared on the short-lived CBS police drama Paris, which aired during autumn 1979. That show was notable as the first program on which Steven Bochco served as executive producer. The second show aired on ABC between 1990 and 1992, the first season being titled Gabriel's Fire and the second (after a format revision) Pros and Cons. In both formats of that show, Jones played a former policeman wrongly convicted of murder who, upon his release from prison, became a private eye. In 1995, Jones starred in Under One Roof as Neb Langston, a widowed African-American police officer sharing his home in Seattle with his daughter, his married son with his children, and Neb's newly adopted son. The show was a mid-season replacement and lasted only six weeks. From 1989 to 1993, Jones served as the host of the children's TV series Long Ago and Far Away. In 1996, James guest starred in the CBS drama Touched by an Angel as the Angels of Angels in the episode "Clipped Wings". In 1998, Jones starred in the widely acclaimed syndicated program An American Moment (created by James R. Kirk and Ninth Wave Productions). Jones took over the role left by Charles Kuralt, upon Kuralt's death. He also made a cameo appearance in "The House of Luthor", the final episode of Season One of Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman as Franklin Stern and has guest-starred on such sitcoms as NBC's Frasier and Will & Grace, CBS's Two and a Half Men, and the WB drama Everwood.

Jones in 2013

In 2009, Jones guest starred in the Fox medical drama House, M.D., in season 6, episode 4, entitled "The Tyrant", as a brutal African dictator named Dibala who has fallen ill. The dictator had made threats of ethnic cleansing against an ethnic minority, the Sitibi, and the team deals with ethical issues of treating a potential mass murderer. In 2013-14, he appeared alongside Malcolm McDowell in a series of commercials for Sprint in which the two recited mundane phone and text-message conversations in a dramatic way.[44][45] Jones appeared as himself on the season 7 episode of The Big Bang Theory entitled "The Convention Conundrum".

In 2015, Jones starred as the Chief Justice Caleb Thorne in the American drama series Agent X alongside actress Sharon Stone, Jeff Hephner, Jamey Sheridan, and others. The television series was aired by TNT from November 8 to December 27, 2015, running only one season and 10 episodes.

Jones married American actress/singer Julienne Marie in 1968, whom he met while performing as Othello in 1964.[46] They had no children, and divorced in 1972.[47] In 1982, he married actress Cecilia Hart, with whom he had one child, son Flynn Earl Jones (born 1982).[48][49] Hart died on October 16, 2016, after a year of living with ovarian cancer.[50] In April 2016, Jones spoke publicly for the first time in nearly 20 years about his long-term health challenge with type 2 diabetes. He has been dealing with diabetes since the mid 1990s.[51]